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Gaming Magazine Ads: Failing the Female Market
Anonymous Coward writes "Just saw an article titled Gaming Magazine Ads: Failing the Female Market. Thought you might find it interesting." The question which I've always had is, what is cause and what is effect? We know that games (and ads, naturally) appeal to men primarily; we know that male gamers are in the majority (though not by as much as I thought; see the article). But do the games/ads actually turn women away, or are they just catering to the pre-existing audience?
From reading the comments on this article it sounds like no one believes women read Slashdot. My boyfriend wishes I didn't, and also wishes I wouldn't talk about the latest techie news when he's trying to get me into bed (and he's an engineer).
I have a degree in Physics, and I've played computer games all my life. I have a linux box. Please don't stereoptype women around me.
As to women and games: My mother has been a compulsive gamer since we got our first computer - and that was an MC-10 my Dad bought in the early 80s. Mum's played more solitaire than you would care to imagine, but that's only because there are no better games for her out there. When we went through a series of Macs, you couldn't get her off Crystal Quest. Last year she played Riven, and when she had finished she asked my brother, with a plaintive, hopeful yet almost fearful tone in her voice, "Are there any more games like *that*? Ones where you don't have to shoot anyone?" And I had the feeling that if there were, she wanted every one of them.
My brother has a playstation, upon which my sister has given her wrists and thumbs a great workout, and so have I. The Japanese know how to make games for women. Let's not forget that. We've wasted many hours and days on tournaments of Bust-a-Move and Bust-a-Groove. Long ago, when my brother used to hire a sega system from the local video store, we all loved Marble Madness.
But if you think all we women like are lame puzzle games, I must tell you, I personally love Warcraft type games, where you manage a society and watch it grow, and warfare has its place alongside hunting, gathering, researching, etc. I also like Caesar II and III. To cap it all, I downloaded the demo for Myth II for my linux box, and I have to say it had an element of appeal (but I'd rather watch my boyfriend play it than do it myself). But I will never enjoy a first person 3D shooter, a side-scrolling action game, or pac man (just cos it's so lame).
As to the magazine advertising - I was shocked and appalled by the descriptions. I would never have even considered buying one of those magazines. They strike me as aimed at teenagers, let alone just men. It wasn't until I read this article that I thought - you know, a gaming magazine for me, that would be a great thing.
AP, Massachussets -- In a landmark study, researchers at MIT have concluded that pornography magazines fail to attract a significant amount of Puritans as subcribers. "The average straight laced Quaker simply will not buy porno, no matter how sexy and hard core the material" claims Dr. Tohtal Klulehs. "We have yet to explain the phenomenon. Hopefully further study will help pornography publishers to penetrate markets traditionally denied them."
"Clearly it is about appealing to a broader range of sexual tastes" said Larry Flynt, publisher of Penthouse and Hustler magazines, "Maybe more pictures of donkeys and ducks, naked and petrified will help spur sales."
The study concludes that pornographers just have not done enough to appeal to people who find public nudity and sex appalling. Critics claim that pornography seems to be primarily, and unfairly, targeted towards horny, sex-starved men. Change, they said, is needed, before the pornography industry collapses completely due to lack of demand.
Actually my girlfriend and I were talking about this after the last slashdot article about the gender divide. We basically agreed that because companies only make "what sells", we see few girl-oriented games, and the ones that /are/ "girl-oriented" are stupid stereotypical bullshit games like "Barbie: Pretty Fantasy Sparkle Love Pony Party Makeover". This crud is selling because girls are growing up pushed towards this stuff. It is a symptom of a much larger problem. How many commercials a day do you see promoting pre-teen girls to use cell-phones, go to parties, use make-up, bake cakes, or try to attract boys? Whole generations of women have been growing up under this brainwashing. No /wonder/ we have so few women in science and technology.
I think we basically decided toys today have gone to shit (as with pop culture). Where the hell are Legos nowadays (well, yeah they are having a comeback with Mindstorms, but those really aren't for "kids"). I am sick of the stupid Radioactive-Space-Cowboy-Time-Traveller themes they have now. Now all you see is Steve-Austin Bash-Em Action figures, and Pokemon.
Same with games. I don't think there is anything inherently anti-girl about computer games. It's not as if their poor girly minds can't understand computers. It's just that nobody is making games for girls with any brains. Remember the Sierra line of role-playing games? Those were the coolest. I have copies of almost every one. They don't make those games any more. I'm sure girls would like games other than action games if they were just presented. But I don't really see anything like that out there. It's just bone-crushing and flaming-death in 3D or real-time strategy. Not too appealing. Myst had somewhat of a success, but that was banal at best.
So girls...what DO you like? It can't be "Barbie: Pretty Fantasy Sparkle Love Pony Party Makeover"... if so I think I've lost all hope for the human race...
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Please. Asking the computer gaming industry to pitch advertising to women is like asking the clothing industry to pitch ads to senior citizens - sure, they represent a significant consumer group, but they are not the primary money makers.
Let me quote the article to illustrate: "Sadly, there is not one "safe" computer gaming magazine I could recommend to my friends who play games like Simcity, Re-Volt, or Myst. Not only do these magazines alienate women, but they also alienate entire groups of non-combative and non-violent gamers."
Which kinds of games create the most profit and have the highest profile? It's not "Casino Hearts" sitting in the bargain basement bin, but rather Quake3 Arena and Unreal Tournament (and their similarly adrenaline- and testosterone-packed counterparts) with their significantly higher price tags and devoted fan bases. Sure, some female gamers enjoy playing these games, but to date they're still a small minority compared to males under 30.
Complaining about the lack of ads geared towards women is not going to change the hard reality that the industry focuses its limited advertising resources to make the most money. Asking any corporation to do otherwise is just plain silly. Change the demographics, and the advertising will change to follow suit.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell.
Why are you so willing to grant that anyone knows (in any great detail) what sells? There are supposedly "sciences" of marketing, of advertising and of management, and of government, etc..., but none of these is anything remotely like a legitimate science.
How about this: advertising decisions express the values of those who make them. That sounds pretty plausible to me, a lot more plausible than vague appeals to bogus "expert" knowledge about "what sells".
For your consideration: there is no such thing as scientific knowledge in any great detail about what sells (or about anything else that involves humans making free decisions under conditions of scarcity). There are a few interesting and true generalizations about human behavior (such as that they will tend not to make their motivations completely transparent to one another), but that's about it. There's no such thing as genuine knowledge about "what sells", because "what sells" depends on what people freely decide to do.
Organizations which make blanket appeals to "what sells" are typically uninterested in articulating the values which animate their own decisions.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
It isn't human nature because besides a survival instinct there isn't much that is exclusively human nature. Most of the things we assume are human nature are actually the results of generations of cultural programming and nothing else. Currently American society (the media, high school, teenage culture) is intensely anti-intellectual and acts like female intellectual pursuits do not exist. When females have no prominent geek role models, are actively discouraged from being geeky, and are taught to value looks over brains, it is not a surprise that there are few geek grrls out there. My only gripe is that this should not be blamed on something as nebulous as human nature (which is a lie, travel to other countries and you'll rethink several of the concepts you assumed were human nature as American/western nature) but instead the real culprits, the media and society in general.
:)
Blaming human nature keeps us from aknowledging the truth and thus stops us from initiating changes to rectify this imbalance. This will be extremely difficult because it will not only require changes in the current educational system but also changes in the way women are viewed by society in general.
PS: I'm a guy and your post struck me as ignorant and sexist...get a girlfriend or some female friends and gain some perspective.
PPS: Read this article on the women gamers site on why techie women think there are less women in technology than males.
PPPS: I'm listening to old NWA mp3s and they were the bomb...I'm about to go get two of their CDs from CDNow (still boycotting Amazon and they are $1 cheaper)
For example, I think Tomb Raider is a fun game. I like the fact that I can adventure and save the world and not have to be some macho guy who enjoys watching naked women (ala Duke Nukem), but instead someone I can relate to just a little bit better. However, the emphasis in advertising on how hot Lara is, rather than on how fun the game is, almost makes me embarrassed to admit I play it, for fear someone might think I'm a lesbian, or at least associated with the lewd advertising.
It is disappointing when otherwise completely enjoyable games are so obviously geared towards ONLY a male perspective. It's one thing to have a male main character, but it is an entirely different thing to have scantily clad women fawning on you at every move, when such actions may not even be relevant to the plot!
On the other hand, there are some games that do a wonderful job of being widely-appealing, including:
As is shown from these best-selling games, it pays to have a wide appeal. Games appealing only to sex-deprived men just don't sell as well as games that have a wider appeal. -Qirien qirien@earthling.net
This is an autocatalytic effect. The male targeted adds encourage a male demographic. The male demographic encourages male targeted adds. If you are really looking for an original cause, consider how male dominated the entire world of technology has been until recently.
Hopefully, the free market system represents a larger feedback loop that will slowly sap this autocatalisys.
On the other hand, one quick look at the (addmitedly younger) toy market shows a great deal of gender demographic targeting. (If Barbie were her own toy corporation, she would be the largest toy corporation in the world)
Thank you for not thinking.
...they wouldn't do it if it didn't sell. Ads are created to get revenue, and I'm sure companies have found that, bluntly, bigger tits sell more games. It would be interesting to see _what_ games women buy, and how those ads in particular are advertised. For instance, there are no naked chicks in Myst ads, I'm sure. As for action games, the percentage of female gamers is so small as to be considered insigificant to advertisers. Why target a group that makes up less than one percent of your buyers?
... thinking. My sister, for instance, doesn't see the point of Quake: in her mind, you get killed only to come back again. What's the point of getting killed if there are no repercutions?
The truth is that games are easier to program for boys. We like points, action, motion, and triggers. Women (stereotypically, but also truthfully) like conversations, complex rewards, stories, and
I would think RPGs would be better suited to the female (tm) mentality, but we all remember what the pictures in the D&D books were like.
Hey, why don't some women prove Jon Katz wrong and voice their opinions? What games do _you_ want to play?
Here goes both my +1 bonus, and all my karma, but someone's gotta say it.
/. is demeaning to women. And exaggerating differences that are eventually minimal. (Legitmate bioneural research debunked most of gender differences as within statistical norms.)
.... you know "news for nerds, stuff that matters" .... if you really want to help women, help this 1 woman nerd with her research and post some math and science!
/. is my favorite place, and the last sanctuary for "intellect" and "geekdom." There is no place else for me to go to get geek news besides here.
/. Hemos stop it already.
1. Women, female, homo sapiens with breasts, are not a different species. They all have their own minds to think for themselves what they like and don't like.
2. More "women like this, men like that" articles on a supposedly intelligent place like
3. 1 woman does not speak for >= 50% of world population. If so, I shall wield my woman power. "Hi. I am female. I know that all women in this world like hot grits poured down a petrified Natalie Portman." Give me karma now. I said I am female and I posted something.
4. The same fallacy is "This is from woman site." "This is written by a woman." This is / must be what all women think.
5. Any time you post an item like this, you are interviewing 1 fewer nuclear physicist, you are reporting on 1 few Open Source project, you are missing out on 1 new mathematical research on encryption
6. Woman? Game? I am a woman. I code for 3D Realms. Enough said about all your generalizations.
7. I want to use my woman telepathy power again. "Hi. I am female. I think all women think your writing this article instead of interviewing Bryce on how to get art and music and content for a free Open Source game offends our entire gender." All women want to share how to get content for games. Really.
8. I shall start the protest of more hard science, more hard math, more hard news, more coding information, more HW information. This is NOT Psychology Today.
9. I only protest strongly because
10. OTOH, if you know of geek inform sites free of this gender - dividing slant, please let me know.
*sigh* I know I am the minority (maybe the only human) in this. I know all you male geeks like this chick topics cuz it causes all the chicks to post. I know all the women like these articles for all the different reasons.
I look forward to the day (apparently really far in the future) when we are all just people.
Go flame. Go take away my karma. If this goes on long enough, I have to stop coming here anyway, so karma won't matter.